Over the last decade, there has been a substantial increase in the use and deployment of wireless client devices, from dual-mode smartphones to tablets capable of operating in accordance with a particular Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standard. With “wireless” becoming the de-facto medium for connectivity among users, it has become increasingly important for network systems to intelligently manage connections.
For example, access points may wirelessly associate with one or more client devices. These access points may establish tunnel connections via corresponding network controllers to provide network access to the one or more client devices. Accordingly, these access points and associated client devices rely on the network controllers to be active and operating correctly such that network access may be maintained for each access point and client device while in tunnel mode.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.